Saving Seafood

Fishermen sue Trump over monument Obama created

March 8, 2017 — A commercial fishing coalition is reportedly suing the Trump administration over a massive marine monument that was created by President Obama off the coast of New England last year.

The fishermen claim that the president’s designation of the Northeast Canyons and Seamounts Marine National Monument back in September — under the Antiquities Act — was a “unilateral” action that ultimately wound up causing economic distress and hardship for locals.

In their lawsuit, filed Tuesday in federal court, the groups requested that the move be ruled as unlawful and asked that President Trump not move forward with Obama’s decision.

“The Northeast Canyons and Seamount National Marine Monument purports to designate a monument in the ocean 130 miles from the nation’s coast. This area of the ocean is not ‘lands owned or controlled’ by the federal government,” the suit says.

“Therefore, the Antiquities Act does not authorize the President to establish the Northeast Canyon and Seamounts Marine National Monument.”

Read the full story at the New York Post

New England fishermen challenge Obama’s marine national monument

March 7, 2017 — The following was released by the Pacific Legal Foundation: 

A coalition of New England fishermen organizations filed suit today over former President Barack Obama’s designation of a vast area of ocean as a national monument — a dictate that could sink commercial fishing in New England.

The organizations filing the lawsuit are the Massachusetts Lobstermen’s Association, Atlantic Offshore Lobstermen’s Association, Long Island Commercial Fishing Association, Rhode Island Fisherman’s Alliance, and Garden State Seafood Association.

They are represented, free of charge, by Pacific Legal Foundation, a watchdog organization that litigates nationwide for limited government, property rights, and a balanced approach to environmental regulations.

Watch this brief video

The lawsuit challenges President Obama’s September 15, 2016, creation of the Northeast Canyons and Seamounts Marine National Monument, 130 miles off the coast of Cape Cod.

“By declaring over 5,000 square miles of ocean — an area the size of Connecticut — to be a national monument, President Obama set this entire area off-limits to most fishing immediately, with what remains of fishing opportunities to be phased out over the next few years,” said PLF attorney Jonathan Wood. “This illegal, unilateral presidential action threatens economic distress for individuals and families who make their living through fishing, and for New England communities that rely on a vibrant fishing industry.”

A monumental abuse of presidential power

President Obama claimed to be relying on the federal Antiquities Act. But as today’s lawsuit makes clear, his decree far exceeded the authority granted to presidents by that 1906 statute. The Antiquities Act was enacted to protect ancient antiquities and human relics threatened by looting, giving the president broad powers to declare monuments consistent with that purpose.

However, the statute permits creation of national monuments only on “lands owned or controlled” by the federal government. Moreover, any designation must be “confined to the smallest area” needed to protect the artifacts or objects that the monument is intended to safeguard.

“President Obama violated both of those core requirements of the law when he created the Northeast Canyons and Seamounts Marine National Monument,” Wood noted. “Most fundamentally, the ocean, where the monument is located, is not ‘land,’ nor is it federally owned or controlled. The monument designation is also not confined to the smallest necessary area; on the contrary, its sprawling boundaries bear no relation to the underwater canyons and seamounts it is supposed to protect. In short, the designation of a vast area of ocean as a national monument was a blatant abuse of presidential power.

“Unfortunately, the Antiquities Act has morphed into a favorite tool for presidents to abuse,” Wood continued. “Today, presidents use it to place vast areas of federal lands off limits to productive use with little input. Monument designations are particularly common at the end of a chief executive’s term, once the president can no longer be held accountable.

“Former President Obama was the king of Antiquities Act abuse, invoking it more times than any prior president and including vastly more area within his designations than any predecessor,” said Wood. “Our lawsuit is intended to rein in abuse of the Antiquities Act and underscore that it is not a blank check allowing presidents to do whatever they want. The creation of the Northeast Canyons and Seamounts Marine National Monument is a clear example of a president exceeding his authority, and we are suing to make sure this edict is struck down and the rule of law prevails.”

No environmental justification

“Beyond its violation of the law, the monument designation also threatens to harm the environment by pushing fishermen to other, less sustainable fisheries, and increasing conflicts between their gear and whales,” said Wood. “The president’s proclamation cites protection of coral as one of the reasons for the monument. But the corals remain pristine after more than four decades of commercial fishing because fishermen know where the corals are, and carefully avoid them, out of environmental concern and because coral destroys their gear.

“Instead of punishing New England’s fishermen — and shutting down their businesses — federal officials should be acknowledging their positive role as stewards of the ocean’s environmental resources,” Wood added. “This is shown in their laudable efforts to promote sustainability. PLF’s clients, for instance, have spent years working to improve their methods and equipment and to retire excess fishing permits, knowing that these costly sacrifices will provide long-term benefits to their industry and the environment. The monument designation undermines those sustainability efforts, by depriving the fishermen of any reward for their sacrifices.”

With a ‘stroke of the pen,’ Obama’s illegal action ‘puts men and women out of work’

“We are fighting every day to keep the men and women in the commercial fishing industry working, but with one stoke of President Obama’s pen — and his abuse of the Antiquities Act — they are out of work,” said Beth Casoni, executive director of the Massachusetts Lobstermen’s Association.

“The monument designation will have a negative rippling effect across the region as fishermen will have to search for new fishing grounds — only to find they are already being fished,” she said. “The shoreside businesses will also feel the impacts, as fishermen have to go further and further to harvest their catch, leaving less funds to reinvest in their businesses.

“We are extremely grateful to have PLF at our side as we fight back against this legal travesty, which is causing so much hardship for the commercial fishing industry here in the Northeast.”

The case is Massachusetts Lobstermen’s Association v. Ross. More information, including the complaint (see attached), a video, photos, podcast, and an explanatory blog post, is available at: www.pacificlegal.org.

Read the full legal filing here 

About Pacific Legal Foundation

Pacific Legal Foundation, America’s most powerful ally for justice, litigates in courts nationwide for limited government, property rights, individual liberty, and a balanced approach to environmental regulations. PLF represents all clients free of charge.

Tred Barta: President Trump Should Stop the Obama Attack on New England Fisherman

February 28, 2017 — In the waning days of his administration, Barack Obama decided to seriously cripple the American fishing industry. By executive order, the former president designated a vast underwater expanse off the coast of New England as the nation’s first aquatic national monument. This decision, driven by evidence-free environmental concerns, effectively banned all commercial fishing in the area.

It’s well within President Trump’s powers to modify this decision, and he ought to do so immediately. Left alone, this designation will undermine the regional economy and deprive countless families of their livelihoods.

The monument, officially announced in September, covers about 5,000 square miles of ocean located 130 miles from Cape Cod. For over 40 years, commercial fishermen have harvested this area for crab, squid, swordfish, tuna, and other high-demand seafood. It’s particularly rich in lobster, of which some 800,000 pounds are caught every year.

This order ends all that activity. Some fishing companies had just 60 days to leave the area.

This exodus will bring economic ruin all along the coast. Bill Palombo, a Newport, Rhode Island lobsterman who runs three boats in the monument waters, says he expects to “just go out of business.” Jon Williams runs Atlantic Red Crab, which employs 150 workers in New Bedford, Massachusetts, and he says the drop in harvests will force him to “maybe sell my business”.

The central promise of the Trump White House is the protection of solid jobs for working families. This order kills exactly those positions: stable, well-paid, immune to outsourcing, and available to workers without a college degree. In the Maine lobster industry, which supports 6,300 local jobs, the average starting salary is over $50,000.

Read the full story at Breitbart

Will Trump Be Able To Undo Papahanaumokuakea?

November 28, 2016 — In the months leading up to the Nov. 8 election, President Barack Obama signed a series of proclamations to dramatically increase the amount of land and water that is federally protected from commercial fishing, mining, drilling and development.

On Aug. 24, he established a nearly 90,000-acre national monument in the Katahdin Woods of Maine. 

Two days later, Obama expanded Papahanaumokuakea Marine National Monument around the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands by 283 million acres, making it the world’s largest protected area at the time.

And on Sept. 15, he created the first national monument in the Atlantic Ocean, protecting more than 3 million acres of marine ecosystems, seamounts and underwater canyons southeast of Cape Cod, Massachusetts.

Obama has used a century-old law called the Antiquities Act to federally protect more land — 550 million acres and counting — than any other president. He’s established 24 new national monuments in at least 14 states since taking office eight years ago, with the bulk of the acreage in Papahanaumokuakea and the Pacific Remote Islands.

But with Republican Donald Trump’s surprise upset of Democrat Hillary Clinton, attention is turning to what Trump plans to do when he takes office in January and whether he will seek to undo or at least modify the national monuments that Obama created.

Advocates for commercial fishing interests on the East Coast have started nudging policymakers to consider what changes the next administration could make. But West Coast and Hawaii industry groups are still gathering information and developing plans.

Saving Seafood, a nonprofit that represents commercial fishing interests, has already started pushing policymakers to consider what changes the next administration could make to the Northeast Canyons and Seamounts Marine National Monument. 

Saving Seafood Executive Director Robert Vanasse told the Associated Press earlier this month that he thinks it would be “rational” to allow some sustainable fishing in the monuments.

Read the full story at the Honolulu Civil Beat

Remote and Vast, Our New Marine Monuments Are Difficult to Protect

November 23, 2016 — Unable to constantly patrol the waters, fishery enforcement agencies need new methods and technologies for monitoring [marine monument] areas.

Just west of the Hawaiian Islands sits one of the largest marine protected areas in the world. In August, President Obama tripled the size of Papahānaumokuākea Marine National Monument, which now stretches across 582,578 square miles of ocean, an area nearly four times the size of California. The monument is home to colorful coral reefs teeming with marine life and encompasses rocky outcrops where some 5.5 million birds, including the Laysan Duck and Short-tailed Albatross, breed every year.

More than 5,000 miles east of the warm Pacific waters of Hawaii, in the frigid northern Atlantic Ocean, sits the 4,913-square-mile Northeast Canyons and Seamounts Marine National Monument, which Obama designated in September. There, 130 miles off the coast of Massachusetts, underwater ravines deeper than the Grand Canyon contain cold-water coral reefs, among the world’s most delicate ecosystems, and the water’s surface serves as the winter home of Maine’s Atlantic Puffins.

The monuments are major victories for environmentalists—with a swipe of his pen, the President banned all commercial fishing within the monuments’ boundaries and outlawed all gas and oil exploration. Protecting marine life in both oceans will ultimately support fisheries and provide refuge for wildlife adapting to a changing climate.

But it’s one thing to designate a monument, and it’s quite another to actually enforce the promised protections. The two new monuments are vast and remote, and authorities already struggle to detect illegal activity in marine protected areas that are smaller and closer to land. In 1997 and 2004, nets and other commercial fishing gear were uncovered in the Monitor National Marine Sanctuary off the coast of North Carolina. Even worse, evidence of fishing with explosives, bleach, and even cyanide has been found in the National Marine Sanctuary of American Samoa.

That the new monuments are so large and located in such distant waters presents an even bigger challenge for the federal agencies responsible for their monitoring. Ideally, crewed vessels would police the areas, says Lisa Symons, resource protection coordinator at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) Office of National Marine Sanctuaries. A physical presence would deter illegal fishing or mining and allow authorities to arrest or capture violating vessels. But this is almost impossible considering the locations of the new monuments—offshore and hundreds of miles from cities, towns, or villages.

Read the full story at Audubon

Fishing industry seeks reversal of Atlantic Marine Monument

November 21, 2016 — The Gloucester Fishing Commission isn’t ready yet to employ a full-court press on President-elect Donald Trump to reverse the Obama administration’s creation of a Marine National Monument in the canyons and seamounts off the coast of southern New England.

It’s not that the commission members think it’s a bad idea. They just think it’s too early to start beating that particular drum.

“There’s already a lot of talk and the group letters will be coming along like before,” said commission Chairman Mark Ring. “But I don’t think we should be doing a letter now. It’s too premature.”

“Let’s wait until he gets into office,” said Angela Sanfilippo.

Other fishing stakeholders around the country have said they hope to appeal to Trump’s oft-stated intent to reverse any of the Obama administration’s policies and decisions he deems to be executive overreach.

“It’s a new day,” said fishing industry advocate Robert Vanasse of the Saving Seafood website. “I would anticipate there would be a desire to address monuments. Whether it’s the radical step of revoking the designation, or modifying it to allow non-destructive, sustainable fishing to take place, which we think is rational, I don’t know.”

Read the full story at the Gloucester Times

Fishermen hope Trump will end Atlantic Ocean’s first marine national monument

November 16, 2016 — The following is excerpted from an Associated Press story that ran in CBS News:

PROVIDENCE, R.I. – New England fishermen who opposed President Barack Obama’s creation of the Atlantic Ocean’s first marine national monument are now hopeful President-elect Donald Trump will abolish it, shrink it or allow some fishing inside it.

While Trump, a Republican, hasn’t specifically addressed the monument, he has said he would undo Obama’s policies that he views as executive overreach.

Obama, a Democrat, has protected more land and water using national monument designations than any other president. The designation can be used to prevent activities such as drilling, mining or commercial fishing to preserve landmarks, natural resources or other areas of historic or scientific value.

Fishing industry advocate Robert Vanasse said that with a Trump White House and GOP-controlled House, “It’s a new day.”

“I would anticipate there would be a desire to address monuments,” said Vanasse, executive director of Saving Seafood. “Whether it’s the radical step of revoking the designation, or modifying it to allow non-destructive, sustainable fishing to take place, which we think is rational, I don’t know.”

The new Northeast Canyons and Seamounts Marine National Monument consists of nearly 5,000 square miles of underwater canyons and mountains off the New England coast. Obama created it in September using executive authority under the Antiquities Act, which closed the area to most commercial fishing on Monday.

Read the full story from the Associated Press at CBS News

New England Fishery Management Council Previews Deep-Sea Coral Amendment Analysis; Addresses Marine National Monument Overlap Issues

November 16, 2016 — The following was released by the New England Fishery Management Council:

The New England Fishery Management Council received a briefing yesterday from its Habitat Committee regarding preliminary Deep-Sea Coral Amendment analyses covering: (1) potential impacts of fishing activity on corals; and (2) available fishery effort and revenue data.

The Council also made two decisions related to the Northeast Canyons and Seamounts Marine National Monument, which President Obama established on Sept. 15, 2016 using his authority under the Antiquities Act of 1906. Although the President designated the monument, his proclamation directed the Secretary of Commerce, in consultation with the Secretary of the Interior, to manage the activities and species within the area under the provisions of the Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act and other federal laws.

In an Oct. 21 letter to the Council, John Bullard, head of the National Marine Fisheries Service’s Greater Atlantic Regional Fisheries Office, asked the Council to amend its fishery management plans to “reflect the action of the President and implement the appropriate fishing regulations for the Marine National Monument.”

The Council discussed the request and decided not to develop its own amendment since it did not designate the monument. This means the Commerce Department will fulfill the President’s charge through a secretarial amendment.

Bullard said public hearings would be held under the secretarial action and any proposed amendments would be sent to both the New England and Mid-Atlantic Councils for “consideration and comment.”

The Council also debated a motion it had postponed during its September meeting to move all proposals in the Deep-Sea Coral Amendment that overlap with the Marine National Monument to the “considered but rejected” portion of the amendment.

After considerable debate, the Council voted to keep the overlapping alternatives in place for further consideration and analysis, noting that it was important to move forward with the coral protection process it had begun before the monument was designated.

Regarding the current list of alternatives in the coral amendment, the Council did vote to add an additional option to the mix.

For background, the Council is proposing to protect corals through the development of two types of coral zones – discrete areas and broad areas, which are defined as follows.

  • “Discrete Areas” designate narrowly defined coral zones in the Gulf of Maine, for single canyons, and on individual seamounts; and
  • “Broad Areas” designate a coral zone along the entire shelf-slope region between the US/Canada Exclusive Economic Zone boundary and the New England/Mid-Atlantic Council boundary.

Broad zones are meant to prevent the expansion of fishing effort into additional deep-water habitats. The Council is considering various minimum depth contours for defining these zones.

The Council further debated whether to continue developing potential lobster trap/pot restrictions in the inshore Gulf of Maine coral zones, which are offshore the state of Maine’s waters near the Outer Schoodic Ridge area and west of Mt. Desert Rock.

The Maine Department of Marine Resources and Maine lobstermen requested that the Council provide an exemption for lobster and crab fishing within these zones, arguing that the inshore lobster fishery in this area is the primary economic driver for two Downeast Maine coastal counties encompassing at least 15 harbors.

The Council acknowledged the importance of these coral zone areas to the lobster fishery but was not prepared to completely eliminate lobster gear restrictions from consideration at this stage of the amendment process. Instead, it will continue to develop inshore Gulf of Maine coral zone alternatives that may restrict these gears but will include an option to exempt lobster trap/pot fishing.

Could Trump undo New England national monuments?

November 14, 2016 — Opponents of new national monuments in Maine’s North Woods and off coastal New England are asking whether Donald Trump could reverse those decisions as part of his campaign pledge to overturn President Obama’s executive orders.

Although preliminary, the discussions illustrate how Trump’s election is already affecting debate on conservation and environmental issues.

President-elect Trump vowed repeatedly during his campaign to repeal the Obama policies he viewed as executive overreach. Trump often made those comments in relation to issues such as immigration, foreign policy or environmental regulation.

Fishermen opposed to Obama’s designation of nearly 5,000 square miles of underwater ecosystem off the coast of southern New England – known as the Northeast Canyons and Seamounts Marine National Monument – also are exploring their options, whether through Trump or the Republican-controlled Congress.

“In the immediate aftermath of Donald Trump’s election, I would say there is a lot of talk about what can be done,” said Robert Vanasse, executive director of the National Coalition for Fishing Communities, which represents fishing organizations and businesses. Vanasse classified the discussions as “informal conversations,” but added: “Clearly the companies and fishermen that have been economically damaged by the actions of the Obama administration are thinking about what in this new (political) environment – president, House and Senate – might be possible.”

Obama designated Northeast Canyons and Seamounts National Monument on Sept. 15, protecting an underwater mountain range that is home to many rare and endangered species.

Read the full story at the Portland Press Herald

Lobster fishermen face a monumental problem

October 3, 2016 — NEWPORT, R.I. — The Newport-based fishing vessel Freedom has been Marc Ducharme’s home away from home since it was built in 1984.

And for the better part of those 32 years, Ducharme, the boat’s captain, and his crews of four to five men have spent their time pulling lobster traps from the waters around three underwater canyons near the edge of the continental shelf, about 125 miles southeast of Nantucket. The crew makes 25-30 runs a year — each lasting about a week — to the lucrative lobster grounds formally referred to as the Northeast Canyons on George’s Bank.

Each trip nets them about 6,000 pounds of lobster, Ducharme said Wednesday, standing in the cockpit of the 72-foot-long vessel docked at the Newport state fishing pier.

“I’ve probably spent more time out there in those canyons than I have on land,” Ducharme said, pointing to the fishing area on a nautical chart.

The time he spends in the 25-mile area where his 1,800 lobster pots are located is growing short, and not just because, at 58 years old, Ducharme is nearing retirement from his sea-faring livelihood.

Using executive authority established by the Antiquities Act of 1906, President Barrack Obama on Sept. 15 designated a 4,900-square- mile area the Northeast Canyons and Seamount Marine National Monument. That area includes the sea canyons, where Ducharme plies his trade. The designation will eventually prohibit all commercial fishing there.

In a last-minute compromise, the Obama administration reduced the proposed size of the monument site and granted a seven-year exemption for lobster and red crab fishermen in the monument area.

Even though he is likely to retire before then, Ducharme is not happy about the eventual ban.

“This is exclusively where I fish, because it’s good,” said Ducharme, who added he catches more than 150,000 lobsters a year. “This (area) has been my life. It’s how I earned my living, how I supported my family. I’m more against the way they went about this.”

Read the full story at the Newport Daily News